A few Bald Eagles

    Here is a link to a picture of a tree near Sheffield Mills, which is about 65 miles from Halifax.  It shows what I think are 10 eagles sitting in one tree.  FWIW, it doesn't look like there is much snow down, but they are predicted to get hit with the 2 N'or Easters this week end.
    We've been to the area many times to see the eagles, and during the eagle viewing festival, but I wouldn't recommend anyone try RVing there this time of the year.

http://thechronicleherald.ca/community/photos/annapolis-valley/one-of-many-trees-full

Ed

I just got to see a Bald Eagle up close at the Flights of Wonder bird show at the Disney World Animal Kingdom. They are positively gigantic birds and so majestic looking. The are the perfect national bird for the US. Better than the Wild Turkey.

I have a great Bald Eagle story. The very first Bald Eagle I ever saw in the wild was ten years ago when I started full timing. I was at Voyageur National Park in Minnesota and saw one sitting in a tree. I was beyond excited. There was a gentleman standing next to me looking at something else so I pointed out the bird to him and told him "Look, there is a Bald Eagle." in an excited voice. He turned to me and in a dry disgusting voice he said to me "I am from Alaska, they are like pigeons up there." and he returned to viewing what ever it was before I upset him.

I photographed another Bald Eagle the next day and decided that I would start my photographic life list with the Bald Eagle. I couldn't think of a better bird to be number one on my list. Well an Ivory Bill Woodpecker might have been better but I still haven't seen one yet. :-\ :'( ??? :-[

    We've seen several dozen in one day during the festival.  There are several chicken coops there and they feed the awful to the eagles so that they will gather and people can see them.  A week of food handouts doesn't seem to effect their ability to hunt on their own when the festival is over.  My favourite view of the Bald Eagle is one fishing over a stream, and grasping one in their claws.

Ed

Hfx_Cdn said:

My favourite view of the Bald Eagle is one fishing over a stream, and grasping one in their claws.

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I would sell my mother to get that shot. I camped at Karick Lake last month for ten days. They have resident Bald Eagles there. I spent a lot of time waiting for one to grab a fish right in front of my campsite but the eagles didn't listen to me as they did their fishing elsewhere. 

Not a bird we often see in Muskoka but this winter I have seen two on seperate occasions. Spectacular bird.

    Tom, as I've said in previous posts, come to NS, we can sit on my daughter's back deck that overlooks the Shubenacadie River and watch them fish.  In the spring, the kiack and then the shad come up river to spawn in large number, and the eagles really don't have to work hard to fill their bellies.  Both are very tasty fish, but are amongst the boniest fish ever, but it doesn't seem to bother the eagles.

Ed

Tom,
If you are ever traveling through upper MI, maybe checking out the northern upper penninsula, many Bald Eagles nesting in areas close to the road near water.  Even in the lower penninsula, I have property in the Croton area (Newaygo County) and spend a bit of time on Hardy Pond between Croton Dam and Hardy Dam.  Some of the most beautiful sights I have ever seen are the eagles swooping down to snatch up the too small fish that the ice fisherman throw on the ice during ice fishing on the pond for a free lunch.  Such precision and silence.  Most fisherman are startled when such a bird suddenly appears flying away with the morsel they left on the ice.  Quite a sight!

Alaska is also a place for pics of the eagles.  The DW and I were on a land/cruise tour in which we took an expedition on a boat that was refitted from the Deadliest Catch TV series.  Once out of U.S. waters (U.S. laws against "bailting" Bald Eagles), they stopped at one of their fishing sites and threw fish out into the waters around us.  The eagles came out of the trees along the shores and swooped in to pick up lunch just a few yards aways from the boat.

We also went on a raft float down a river through a Bald Eagle reserve.  Beautiful birds in their natural environment doing what they do best.  I have many pics.  Not taken with your equipment and expertise, granted.  But special to me.

Just some ideas if you are ever traveling in the area.

Thanks for the suggestions Marc and Ed. I will keep that in mind. I was sitting on a bench on Main Street at Disney World this afternoon eating a box of popcorn and drinking a coke. I was watching about 100 Ring Billed Gulls flying around over head. Suddenly I noticed a Bald Eagle in among them. At first I thought I was seeing things but it did have a white head and a white tail with a brown body. So my next thought it that it was a Disney animatronic. But no, it was a real live Bald Eagle. He was climbing and I had the wrong camera with me for bird photos so I did not get a shot of him.

SeilerBird said:

But no, it was a real live Bald Eagle. He was climbing and I had the wrong camera with me for bird photos so I did not get a shot of him.

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A beautiful sight, to say the least.  Good luck and I hope you have the right camera next time.

Hey SeilerBird.  Love your pictures.

My wife and I were on our way to the city nearest our little town on the Trans-Canada Highway.  At that point, the highway follows close along the South Thompson River for most of the journey, flowing from Shuswap Lake to join the mighty Fraser River and on to the West Coast at Vancouver about 250 miles away.

We always have Bald Eagles and Osprey in the area that fish in the river daily.  This one time we saw a "baldie" diving into a cove area, so we stopped and could then see that he was after some ducks swimming in the area.  As we watched he made a pass at one of them, but as he got close, the duck dove under.  Well, this eagle swooped up in a near vertical climb, all the time with his head cocked sideways. As he reached a point about 30-50 feet above the water, he did the most beautiful "Immelmann" you ever saw and reversed direction, diving on that duck just as he surfaced.  I don't think the head of the duck was more than halfway out of the water.  Goodbye duck!  Your next {and probably last) flight will be in the eagle's talons. It was a sight to behold and one I don't expect I'll ever see again. 

For clarification:  Any of you WW II-knowledgeable flyers out there will recall that an Immelmann turn was done to quickly reposition yourself behind the enemy chasing you, and done properly flying a plane properly equipped with the power to do so like a Spit or P51, would put you on his tail and in your gunsights before he knew where you went.  Climb...half roll, stick over and down on him.

But I digress.  This area is as good as any for great bird photography, and there are two eagle festivals in the area between here and Vancouver in Nov. and December each year. Fifteen hundred to two thousand birds are not uncommon (but you gotta' believe that the powers that be are counting some birds twice).  I wish I could find the link to a Youtube video which showed a large Bald Eagle grabbing a almost equally large Salmon.  So large in fact that he couldn't lift it.  The video shows him dopping it twice, the the third time he landed right on it and using his wings like oars, he paddled it to a small island nearby. Smart bird!

There is something to be said for living in "God's Country".  Come visit British Columbia Tom, on your travels.

Thanks Gord for your kind words. I have spent a few weeks at North Cascades National Park camped right on the banks of the Skagit River and I would sit out there in the afternoon with my camera all set but never did I catch a Bald Eagle fishing. I have seen them fish when I didn't have my camera ready. The locals all tell me that in January they are overrun with Eagles. In fact they hold the Skagit Eagle Festival in Concrete (now there is a thriving metropolis ;D) every January.

I would love to attend but I am a snowbird and I go nowhere near cold weather in the winter. Sometimes however cold weather does come and visit me in the south. Last month in Tucson it got down to 18 degrees for three nights in a row. I have lived near Chicago, at Lake Tahoe and in Salt Lake City so I have have had all the snow I could ever want. If the Eagles want me to photograph them they will have to come visit me.

I do know what an Immelmann turn is. I spent a whole lot of time flying the Microsoft Flight Simulator. However I never was able to do one. They are very difficult to pull off in a Cessna 182 8)

Found it Tom!  Wouldn't you just loved to have been there with your camera?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QCDJo4_WOAg
Enjoy
Gord

That is bizarre. It reminds me of the time I was scuba diving at about 30 feet and a duck swam/flew by me. Pretty amazing sight.

Heh, Heh.  Yeah, that where I did my flying too but in the earlier years of Microsoft Flight Simulator they put out "Combat Flight Simulator".  That gave some semblance of what it must have been like, I'm guessing.

By the way, the day we were watching that eagle with the ducks, it was near 35 deg. C or in your parlance,  95 F.  Heck, it hardly ever gets below 32 F. in Vancouver in the Winter.

We'll stand you to a meal and coffee...or something stronger if you like.

Nesting Ospreys, Marmots, World's best Salmon Run in October (Adams River) 5.4 million the year(98) I helped run the Salmon Festival right here where I live. Lots to attract a full-timer.

But if it is to be "snowbird only" then shoot well, and continue to post'em.

For clarification:  Any of you WW II-knowledgeable flyers out there will recall that an Immelmann turn was done to quickly reposition yourself behind the enemy chasing you, and done properly flying a plane properly equipped with the power to do so like a Spit or P51, would put you on his tail and in your gunsights before he knew where you went.  Climb...half roll, stick over and down on him.

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Just to amplify, an Immelmann, as done today, is a half loop followed by a half roll (to rightside up). Wikipedia claims (I'd never come across this before) that the original Immelmann was what appears (to me) a cross between the Immelmann above and a hammerhead (climb straight up, pivot at low speed to come back down nearly the same path). In any case, I'd sure love to have seen that maneuver by an eagle (or any bird).

Richard Bach (author of Jonathon Livingston Seagull, among other things) used to lament that gulls were very disappointing to him. He said they had the design (he went into more detail) for all kinds of neat aerobatics, but they always chickened out.

The coolest flight sim I ever used was Chuck Yeager's Advanced Flight Trainer in 1987 by Electronic Arts. It was not a flight sim anything like the MS one. There were cool games you could play. The coolest was called something like "Follow the Leader". You would take off right on Chucks tail and he went through a lot of maneuvers to loose you. Eventually you would crash and then he would come on the screen and say something to embarrass you by saying something like "Better go back to flight school, rookie" or "You bought the farm". Keeping up with him of course was impossible.

Keeping up with him of course was impossible.

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As, of course, it was in real life (according to an awfully lot of pilots that flew with/against him). I recall that one -- used it for a while.

One that I liked better, most ways, was Flight Unlimited, mostly flying a Pitts Special in a limited area in California, but with amazingly real flight characteristics, and some other very nice features. Flight Unlimited III, the last of the series, was really nice, including the best water (and water/land interface) I've seen in any sim yet, a broader area of operation, and quite a few different aircraft, along with the best weather and some of the better scenery of its time. I wish it had been more successful, as I'd certainly like to see what it would look  like today, probably blow my mind.

Larry N. said:

Just to amplify, an Immelmann, as done today, is a half loop followed by a half roll (to rightside up). Wikipedia claims (I'd never come across this before) that the original Immelmann was what appears (to me) a cross between the Immelmann above and a hammerhead (climb straight up, pivot at low speed to come back down nearly the same path). In any case, I'd sure love to have seen that maneuver by an eagle (or any bird).

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Hi Larry.
Yeah, that is what I should have said.  I did describe it wrong but in my defense, in the eagle's case, he did it as I descibed.  (I don't think he knew who Immelmann was!  :-[  You would have loved it.  My wife had to say "close you're mouth now". It's over.  Wow!  My kingdom (such as it is) for a camera!  Actually, I now carry one under my front seat just in case. 

Staff edit: Add missing end quote tag

Gord,

I certainly believe the eagle did as you described, and I was only trying to clarify the designation of Immelmann.

My kingdom (such as it is) for a camera! Actually, I now carry one under my front seat just in case. 

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In addition to carrying my Nikon when I anticipate the need for a camera, I carry a small Canon in my shirt pocket, but it takes time to get it out, turned on and operational. If I started to get the camera when I saw the eagle's initial dive, his described maneuvers would have been over before I could have made the camera operational. This has happened to me a number of times (not the eagle, but missing a desired picture). On the other hand, there've also been a lot of times I got pictures I'd have otherwise missed.

Hey again Larry,

Certainly no offence taken. 
Like you, even if I had  my so called "Prosumer" camera (Canon T3i and zoom lens)with me, I'd still be setting it up, or adjusting settings, etc, etc. while the Eagle was doing his thing, and gone to eat the prize.  :
A PAS camera, like the others have said makes good sense a good deal of the time.